Howdy y'all. As I'm sure you are aware by now gw have released photos or the new coven member (which I've put here, image courtesy of faiet 212 at natfka.blogspot.com GO READ).

It's going to be resin.

And I'm a bit dissapointed!

With all the new coven models I've seen, this one colours me unimpessed. I assume it's armed with a liquifier (which is an assault weapon, not a pistol like this gentleman's armed with - confusing when it comes to attacks in cc), a blade, a generic gauntlet for flesh gauntlet or scissor hand and a generic box.

All in a pose that is floating pretty much shouting "shoot me"!

He's just a rakarth light model, and doesn't seem to leave much scope for personalisation. Usually, when I see a model I get all sorts of ideas on how to convert it and make it "mine", but this just isn't doing for me. One can hope its multipiece though!

Will I buy one? Doubtlessly. Just I really think the old figures have so much more character.

I've got low hopes for any wrack models too, but then again I'm rather fond on my own conversions so I'm biased!

Also, while I'm here, please remember to check out my other blog at my Musk blog. I've added further pics and, since I'm only allowed one site on ftw it's a bit more dificult to spread the word without being an utter promowhore(tm).

Also, to end on an unselfish note, check out Eye of Error. That dude knows how to make a haemonculus!

Friday, 13 May 2011

Greeting my fellow archon's, and other species equivalents! I'm on my lunch break at work yet again, striving to bring you a full update of what occurred at Chaos Day.

The anteroom for Hooters - surprisingly Gothic

So, the next morning, I was canny and elected to take the bye. With 11 players, every round we unfortunately had to have some one sit out. This is unfortunate, but alas, such is the nature of Chaos Day.

The mission I missed, luckily, was my own mission - Marked for dead. The main objective was to eliminate you opponent's key unit. The mission, taken from the rules pack I made and no one read until the day...

Marked for dead

Your advances have faltered, hitting a point of resistance you’re unable to break. Your troops are disciplined; your battle strategies are sound. But yet, the enemy does not yield. Time after time, the waves of your attacks crash on their defences, unable to break the deadlock.

Yet a group of enemy warriors spurs on their comrades to greater acts of valiance. Their actions alone have cost you men and resources you can ill afford to lose. You’re confident the enemy, upon seeing these warriors fall, will suffer a blow to morale greater than any military strike. Their courage would falter, their lines will break and their defence will crumble.

You’ve brought them to battle, now you must bring them to their knees. Destroy the enemy’s champions, and then crush those who are left. But be careful, they may be aiming to blunt your spearhead by cutting down your own great warriors too…

Setup

Mission is as normal for an Annihilation mission with the setup pitched battle. Kill points however are not in use, instead victory points are.

After deployment, each player nominates one of their enemy’s units that is on the table, announcing before the start of the first turn. This may be any non-vehicle elite, walker (the only exception to the non vehicle rule), fast attack or monstrous creature, with a minimum cost of 125pt. Players are encouraged to pick targets they would be happy to brag about killing, rather than puny squads of grots. Mark this squad with a skull, a photo of Adam Torap or another suitably grim marker.

If the opposing player is one of those cowardly sorts who puts everything in reserve (or one of those brave, dashing players who plays Daemons!), you may still choose your target before your enemy’s first turn. This target, if given the choice, must make all attempts to enter on the first turn (be in the first wave of daemons etc). Otherwise, for any reason, they don’t arrive in the first turn, they get +2 to their reserve rolls (they are spoiling to get to grips with you!).

This unit is worth double victory points if destroyed. However, any unit the chosen unit destroys is worth 50% more VPs.

If one chosen unit destroys the other chosen unit, they are worth triple victory points.

The Vindi-may-care, in his famous "wolf tamer" poise

The winner is decided by standard victory points at the end of the game. Remember, big juicy targets will earn you the most victory points, and any squad you kill with your marked squad will earn you big points too!"

This led to Paul having a huge breakdown when Adam's Assassin (Paul's target) sniped his last plunderwolf (Adam's target unit) with a shieldbreaker. This single shot won Adam the game due to the monstrous 600 victory points for target on target kill! Paul hated the mission...I actually think it worked. It made you think tactically with your monster unit - do you run them forward and kill as much as you can, or hide them tactically? Do you shoot your opponent's monster unit, and risk ignoring the rest of his army?

My only full game of the day came against one of my regular opponents, Max and his technicolour blood angels. Max was a last minute participant and had to borrow a few units to pull his list up to 1750. One of which, was that bastard Mephiston. The second, was that bastard furiouso dreadnought with bloodtalons of infinite bloody blooding.

The game was dawn of war with 5 objectives. He got first turn and stuck his razorbacks and mephiston in a position that confined where I could place my blob squad . I put the blob, sliscus, and an empty raider in a corner as far from mephiston as possible. Due to mephiston's fleet AND magical flight, I didn't want any first turn charges. Keeping him as far away as possible meant he couldn't do much and kept him out of the game whilst I dealt with the tanks.
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The blob squad in action. Don't be afraid to use your nails, boys.

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So, his first turn, a bloody dreadnought lands right behind my blob (one that was provided to Max by Dan, which is very similar to the one pictured below, which is also Dan's...he has about 6 of the buggers), and a land raider trundles on the opposite side.. No matter, I'll just blow the audacious so and so up with my heat lance and blaster jetbikes. They come on behind it and needing 3s I roll...two 2s.

The rest of my lances and blasters roll a whole heap of nothing as well, save one, who blew up a razorback despite it popping first turn smoke. This is going to go down hill, really fast. I jump my jetbikes in my assualt turn to make a nice line to block the dreadnought charging my blob's rear. I also keep my bloodbrides nearby in case so I can charge the dread and stall it later. The land raider isn't touched despite my lances special rule "anti land raider".

Could you get him to step forward? And turn around?
Yes, yes, that's him, the one on the left.

The dread I manage to stall for a few turns with my bloodbrides, eventually destroying it from a haywire grenade up the wazoo. The terminators in the land raider end up eating my blob. Alas, even Max's poor rolling couldn't save me, as he needed 2s to wound sliscus on four d6 and rolled a 1,1,1,2. I laughed heartily, rolling for my 2++ shadowfield save and got a single 1 myself!

Fortunately, after his terminators chased the blobsquad down and killed them (sound familiar?) my second squad of troops plodded onto my board edge and shot them up, forcing a couple to run back into their land raider. I cheekily contested my own objective, whilst flat outting my remaining raider and disintigrator ravagers over two other objectives. In the end, he comfortably claimed 2 objectives to my paltry 1, although I still argued over one of them just to see the look on his face to realise I might have drawn!

This game made me realise that reserving my force in dawn of war is an utter pointless exercise. I should have brought my entire army on straight away rather than letting it come on piecemeal. Hmmph.

My final game was cut short unfortunately, with my old opponent Adam Torap. His grey-knights-with-no-grey-knights was composed of inquisitors and henchmen, and the now infamous arch-bitch-valkaryie or whatever her name was.

Real men wear pink

This was a special mission. One objective, slap bang in the middle of the board. Anyone could claim it. We unfortunately only got to turn 3, where adam was leading on victory points by about 50! "highlights" include my haemonculus failing to instagib valkamary with his "Rusk-blade" (it proving this weekend to be about as much use as a child's biscuit) before valkamary opened her crazy corridor to the eternal labarynth of elsewhere, sending my haemoncularse to play with Garlic Jr in the null zone.

I hate gimmicks.

Anyway, with that final battle, I secured myself the bottom place! I had an absolute blast over the weekend, and learnt alot of useful tidbits about the Dark Eldar. And it's much better to lose horribly amongst friends on a fun weekend, than at a snobbish full on tournament against people bringing their A-Game!

The Dishonour Squad and Plyskyn, living up to their name this weekend.

Adam's Corteaz conversion - I love his conversions!

pew pew!

I've bunged in as many pictures as I humanly can. I'll probably slack off from updating on here over the next few weeks, as I'm undertaking the challenge of learning how to play fantasy and build a 1500 point army in a month! I'll still be popping in with some of my armies pictures, and I'll definitely be proactive once the new dark eldar models are out in a few weeks time!

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

I was a bit worried as my dark eldar fever had wained ever so slightly post chaos day - however with these releases I'll be back on the d'eldar bandwagon in no time! Looks like my haemonculus army is next (even though they're rubbish!). Admit it, those taloi are utterly amazing!

I've also got a few camera snaps to add to this post from chaos day. One is my blob squad awaiting orders, whilst the other is a stunning piece of terrain found in the dark eldar display cabinet. I couldn't quite snap it with the dodgy lighting, but wanted to share it all with you anyway.

Also if you want to pop over to the Faiet 212 blog, he's acquired images of the leaked razorwing fighter out later in june!

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Well, it is if you have a real life. So, the weekend post chaos day is over (aka The girlfriend's 24th annual birthing day ritual). Fun was indeed had by all, including her nephew who insisted I had "one more game of donkey kong" 6 times (I fear he may be the real life version of Joffrey, famed from A song of Ice and Fire...).

So, hello my beloved blog! We meet again!

Last post, we went into a brief bit about what went wrong at Chaos day for me. Now, I'll go into some brief tidbits of games. I hope you understand that once we got going I didn't get chance to fully take photos and compose full reports, but hopefully you'll find my summaries of my games quite entertaining.

Prematch warmup

Now, this wasn't technically my first game. I had chance for a warm up against Laird Tebbutt (she owns land in scotland, don't you know?) and her Thousand Sons. We never actually finished, and involved both of us forgetting rules left right and centre. It did make me realise Dark Eldar have a shedload of special rules for each unit. It can be utterly mind boggling sitting down against an army, especially if you're new, and be told "this unit does this this and this, this does this, I get to roll two D6 and pick whatever I want, oh look I did". I know the chaos codex inside out almost and Ellen was a new player who had never played at this points level before.

We never finished the game, but to be honest, I think Ellen had my number. My dark lances just plinked off the rhino hulls, snapping a bolter off here, shaking a rhino there. Nothing actually stuck, and in three turns of shooting I only immobilised one rhino. Out of Four. Not a good start!

Game 1 - Yankydoodle Paul and his plunderwolf brigade

So the much vaunted game! It's a shame I was playing a new army, as if I was going ahead with my old daemons I think I'd have given his wolves a good run for their money! Instead, in my first game with my test list, I was in for a tough game!

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Paul's plunderwolves frolicking, waiting for a car to chase

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Paul's list was your standard gray (sic) hunter 5 man spam (typo for my homesick opponent) with a wolf guard chaperone all in razorbacks. There were some rune priests about, both with living lightning (my favourite power to hate now) one with jaws and the other with murderous hurricane. Oh, and then his favourite unit - two squads of three plunderwolves, all with their sucky blankets/storm shield that granted them their 3up invulnerable.

Mission was straight forward kill points. He put everything bar the thunderwolves on the table. All was going to plan, my bloodbrides flatoutted behind some cover, my raiders and ravagers emerged to send a devastating volley into his non smoked razorbacks and...

They were 38inches away. Absolute rooky error! 2inches out of range. The unlimited living lightning came, the lascannons came. The next few turns what lances I had left failed to do anything to his tanks. One was immobilised.

My blobsquad of sliscus and co, which I'd left on a hill with a commanding view, spent most of the game out of range.

Highlights came from my wyches and reavers combining to kill one squad of hunters, and 5/6ths of a long fang squad. I threw everything into the long fang, trying to get rid of him before the thunderwolves came on. The wyches got hurricaned, and lost 3 of their number to dangerous terrain rolls attempting to reach cover.

The long fang stayed put, even winning the combat! Unfortunately I couldn't get rid of him, and the thunderwolves came bounding on and wiped my right flank in a whirlwind of unrealistic animal husbandry. With that flank, went my game, I lost 7 KP to 4.

Game 2 - James L.G. and his 99% Deathwing.

My second game was James Le Grys, a really nice chap who I've played around the tourny circuit a few times. Now, we have a bit of a history. Our first game was my daemons against his ravenwing in a real cat and mouse objective mission back at Carnage tournament (a now defunct tournament) about 3 years ago. In this game, I technically won, holding 3 objectives to 2. However, the game scoring system meant I actually lost due to a massacre on victory points! The actual gaming objectives held no reference to the actual result of the game!

James is also a good friend of Adam Smith, the chap who runs the space wolf blog. James said that he's only ever in the blog when Adam beats him - becoming part of a glorious space wolf propaganda machine! Well, I've got some good new James: You're being mentioned in the blog and beat somebody!

James actually won the tournemant overall, utterly hammering every opponent he had. He ran a pure infantry deathwing list, with Belial and a thunder hammer, and Ezekial (hence the 99% deathwing!).

Now, the Dark Angels have some terribly tasty psychic powers and I never realised! Force barrier specifically allowed his command squad to ignore one instant death shot. Extremely useful for ignoring those cheeky lance shots.

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James's command squad (Ezekiel not included)

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We played the old fashioned cleanse mission from the last edition of 40K, which involved claiming table quarters. He set his entire army up in cover, as I did. We then stood off and pummelled each other for 3 or 4 turns. In a game of attrition, however, his superior armour came through. He walked his command squad across into my blob and kicked the shite out of my blob squad thoroughly (after my haemonoculus opened her casket of flensing and a load of rubber snakes popped out at strength 1 AP 6. Thankfully his hellfire roll was strength 0 too).

Highlights were that my disintigrators made mincement out of 4 terminators, and my reavers finished the last one for a pain token. My splinter cannons also managed to tickle some terminators to death from across the board.

Game 3 - Martyn's Sister's of Battle

Martyn was a sisters of battle player, and I've yet to meet a nasty sisters player. He was getting back into the hobby, so I figured a thorough spanking of my dark eldar was just what he needed.

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One of my raiders, sitting pretty over an objective

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This was a close game, with capture and control the name of the game. Highlights involved sliscus cutting a squad of seraphim who charged him to ribbons, however the random game end got me once again. He had a solitary sister on my objective, with a squad bearing down on her. I would have also turboboosted onto his objective should the game have gone one extra turn, earning a valuable win for the dark eldar! However...the game ended abruptly, leaving me cursing my bad luck yet again! Curses! [/mojojojo]

So, the first day ended, we all slinked off and got pissed in hooters and pit and pendulum, whilst the grey knight players went to a gay night leading to obvious name calling and questions regarding their sexual alignment. I'll be along with the second days worth of gaming action, and some more photos, shortly!

Friday, 6 May 2011

Let me first of all take this time to apologise for taking so long to update ATOV (A taste of Venom, geddit, I reckon that it will catch on). I got home from the tournament on monday afternoon, after which we'd had a 2 hour drive, another hour doing "the big shop" and most importantly - almost 3 days of constant nerd on nerd action! I probably should have updated my blog then, striking while the proverbial iron was tepid, but I napped. Twice. It was all too much, and I was suffering a bit of gamer burn out. Instead of writing a sub par post, I wanted to give all you puppies a decent blagger post to fully communicate my wonderful experiences.

So, tuesday night...I got busy again. I'm crap arn't I? I've no excuse. I had two episodes of Game of thrones and a doctor who to watch via a streaming website! Priorities!

Wednesday I was late at work and then filled from steak, Thursday I spent playing football and soaking my pulled muscles, so now it's friday!

I'm currently sat on my lunch break, at work, supping a can of fanta and eating a luke warm pasty updating my blog. Dedication guys!

So I'm afraid I'm going to have to briefly update my blog today, in huge blocks of texts with no graphics to break it up (funnily most dark eldar pictures are NSFW...) and whet your apetites in anticipation of what is soon to come. Sunday! I promise!

So, I won a prize at chaos day. Out of 11 players I came...11th! Go dark eldar! I can, however, find every fault in my list. My list was basically written on the fly, utilising the models I had at my disposal. It lacked any real direction, and leant heavily towards gadgets and knick knackery rather than solid plans for a dark eldar list.

But, I did have fun! And that's what it's about, isn't it?

I can safely say I would have won a fair few games with my daemons, that's for sure. However, this weekend did give me a fair few pointers on what the Dark Eldar need to succeed!

Here's a list of things I would recommend for all dark eldar player novices.

1) Flickerfields for all!

No exception to this rule. I was a chump and thought I'd cut down all the costs on my raiders by saving on "pointless" ungrades. Wrong. Chump! It's bloody difficult to hide 50% of a raider that's an inch above the ground and has a huge sail strapped to it's back. I've also bee imformed that 50% of the FACING has to be obscured, not just 50% of the vehicle. I'm dubious on this rule, I must admit. But it was the concensus of many a player. Who am I to argue with democracy?!

2) Blobsquads...yeuch!

I think I actually mentioned in the earlier post regarding blobsquads, I've never been a fan. I am still, not a fan. True, 20 dark eldar in cover and with feel no pain were a chore to move, but in rality when someone gets in combat with them, they're going to run. I had the unpleasant experience of having a dreadnought deep strike behind my blob, and a land raider full of terminators in front. My reavers with heat lance and blaster decided it was too boring to have a foregone conclusion to kill a dreadnought in turn one, so missed with both their shots on it's rear armour. And also, Lances decided to send a token few shots into the Av14 rump of the raider an not penetrate it. With luck like that, who needs tactics?!
There were a couple of people who truely excelled in the blob...

3) Splinter cannons

Indeed, two splinter cannons hitting and wounding on 3s kept a squad of terminators at bay for most of a game. Their 36in range is also beastly. I can see some trueboarn with these in a venom becoming a staple of my lists.

4) Haemonoculi items are bunk!

It may just be my luck, but Haemonoculi items did sweet FA all weekend! I rolled strength 1 for my casket of flensing and I only got my Crucible off once (trying to instagib mephiston was a tad ambitious...). I should really tool the haemonoculi up for some close quaters, especially with the wracks.

The rest of the list performed as I expected. The reavers did hardly any shooting, bladevaning quite often. Feel no pain is extremely useful, as is the Sliscus double drug roll. The bloodbrides, when given an actual archon (or even a siren) will be very handing in close combat.